Plague and Literature

This new mode of living has given me more time than usual but still less than I would like for reading. Like many readers and literature-bloggers, I have been thinking about plagues in literature. Slowly, I have collected the following works that describe or are set during a plague. 

If this self-isolation lasts as long as the pundits are saying, we will all have enough time not only to read (or watch) each one of these but also to learn the language in which each was written and then read them in their original form. 

Ancient works

1 Book 2 of Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (chapters 47-54).

  

   Note: Describes the plague that devastated Athens during the second year (430 BC) of the Peloponnesian War; the plague returned twice after this. It is a gripping and horrifying account. By placing his description immediately after the long, scarily nationalistic speech that he puts in the mouth of the Athenian statesman Pericles, Thucydides creates a striking juxtaposition.

I am reading this in Greek with an intrepid and highly-motivated high school student, and I can confidently say that (1) Thucydides is much more challenging and rewarding than I had thought and (2) The English translations I have seen do not do justice, perhaps because in English justice cannot be done, to the difficulty and inconcinnity of Thucydides' Greek.

By the way, if you want to read Thucydides in English, there is simply no better edition out there than this one. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The best edition out there (click on pic for link).

Thucydides' description became the model for these ancient writers when they sat down to write about a plague:

2 Book 6 of Lucretius, The Nature of Things (lines 1138-1286).

   Note: A description of the Athenian plague.

3 Book 7 of Ovid, Metamorphoses (lines 523-581). 

   Note: Describes a plague on the island of Aegina.

4 Book 3 of Vergil, Georgics (lines 478-566).

   Note: Describes a plague that affected horse and cattle.  

Book 2 of Procopius, History of the Wars (chapter 22).

   Note: Describes the famous Plague of Justinian, which was a bubonic plague that struck Europe in the 6th century (and may have continued sporadically for another two centuries). It was likely caused by Yersinia pestis, the very bacterium responsible for the Black Death that ravaged Europe nearly a millennium later. Classical aside: the bubonic plague is so named because the most common symptoms of the disease were swollen lymph nodes, often in or near the groin, and the Greek word for "groin", "gland", or "swollen gland" is βουβών.

Emperor Justinian, "I see your COVID-19 and raise you one Bubonic Plague."

Modern works

The prologue to Boccaccio's Decameron, which is set during the Black Death.

Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, an account of what, in 1665, turned out to be the final outbreak of the bubonic plague to strike London.

Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig).

Albert Camus, The Plague (La Peste).

I have now added these to my ever-expanding "To Read" list.

Special mention

And of all the movies one could mention that involve an apocalyptic plague, the best remains Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, set during the Black Death.